Anselm's ontological argument is how he explains God as a necessary cause. Spinoza is a modern thinker who explains God as a cause as well. Spinoza is a monist who believes everything is one. Therefore, he believes God is the only substance and existence there is. Spinoza states that "by God I understand a being absolutely infinite, that is, a substance consisting of an inf... ... middle of paper ... ...s and material.
The ontological argument states that by understanding the nature of God himself, we come to realize he exists. He explains this argument by first defining what God is. Anslem says that God is a being than which nothing greater can be conceived to exist, that it can not even be considered not to exist. In short, the fact that said being can not be considered not to exist, would thereby make it greater than any that could be considered not to exist. This would in all reality be the secret to God's omnipotence in Anlsem's eyes.
Spinoza’s method of proving one substance relies upon his definitions and reason. I take further issue with this method because God cannot be proven through reason alone. Through this same reasoning Spinoza gives life too much meaning. In his argument, he claims that since God is the only substance all things flow from God. Meaning that everything in existence is a part of
Furthermore, proposition 16 demonstrates that God’s essence contains infinite things and infinite modes. By containing infinite things and infinite modes, by definition, there is nothing that could exist outside of Go... ... middle of paper ... ...rtes. By rejecting Descartes objection of the possibility of more than one substance, Spinoza’s is able to preserve his argument for substance monism, and thus, the impossibility of things being other than the way they are. In conclusion, in 1p33s2 of the Ethics, Spinoza argues against the traditional view that things could have been created by God in some other way or order when he states “All things depend on God’s power. So in order for things to be able to be different, God’s will would necessarily also have to be different.
Ontological arguments are a priori, which show that God exists without appealing to a sense experience. These ontological arguments argue about what God is to where he is from. St. Anselm, the creator of the ontological argument, based his theory on that we cannot think of anything greater than God. Therefor God must exist, why you might ask? If the greatest thing that we can conceive does not exist than we can still conceive the greatest thing that does exist, and that would be God.
Throughout this proof, Descartes is trying to use God’s existence as a way of affirming that which he clearly and distinctly perceives. However, he is also trying to prove God’s existence by claiming that the idea of God is a clear and distinct perception. Without inquiring into the existence of God, “it appears I am never capable of being completely ... ... middle of paper ... ...hat God too exists" (Descartes, 34). Descartes proof of the existence of God is derived from his establishment that something cannot come from nothing. Because God is a perfect being, the idea of God can be found from exploring the different notions of ideas.
Therefore, if God is the greatest conceivable being and has all qualities, he must have all predicates, one of them being existence, therefore God must surely exist. Descartes says that trying to imagine God without the predicate of existence is illogical, like imagining a triangle without three sides! In conclusion to Descartes’s argument, if the most perfect thing has all p... ... middle of paper ... ... have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist…therefore we cannot but admit the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity…” Furthermore, there must have been a ‘necessary being’ to bring about this existence, this being God. He evaluated that if God did not exist, then nothing would exist. In conclusion, Aquinas presents in his three ways of proving the existence of God that nothing could have existed without the existence of another.
The Cosmological Argument attempts to prove that God exists by showing that there cannot be an infinite number of regressions of causes to things that exist. It states that there must be a final uncaused-cause of all things. This uncaused-cause is asserted to be God. Arguments like this are thought up to recognize why we and the universe exist. The Cosmological Argument takes several forms but is basically represented below.
Descartes' Meditations Ontological Argument Descartes's fifth Meditation argument for God's existence relies on an untenable notion that existence is a perfection and that it can be predicated of God. I shall first explain what Descartes's argument for God's existence is, and then present his argument in propositional form. I will then attempt to support the argument that existence is neither a perfection nor a predicate of God. In our thoughts we apprehend ideas of things. These ideas may reside entirely within our thoughts or they may exist independent of our considerations of them (Descartes 143).
Aquinas has been a firm believer that everything had to have a creator and the only possible solution would be something called God. It is with this idea that Aquinas's Third Way was written. In his De aeternitate mundi contra murmurantes, Aquinas insists that human reason cannot prove the impossibility of an eternally created universe. Once again Aquinas has written with the certainty that God has to exist in order to have created the universe. There is no doubt in Aquinas's mind that everything was created for a reason and that reason was God's will.